Welcome to SIN INC. Vice is my beat. I've written for Harper's Bazaar, Details, Newsweek, Salon, Slate, The Daily Beast, CNN, Marie Claire, Women's Health, Glamour UK, The LA Weekly, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Guardian, The Telegraph, Variety, Esquire, and The Atlantic. In 2008, TIME named me a best blogger of the year. I've appeared on CNN, NPR, and "Politically Incorrect." [EMAIL]

I Am the Facebook Whisperer

“You’re the expert, right?” the woman on the other end of the line says.

I write Facebook status updates for products produced by a company that reported nearly $100 billion in revenue last year. The brands are ubiquitous, iconic; in all likelihood, at least one of them is in your house.

An expert at what? I think.

I am not sure what to say.

Be the product

In January, I was downsized. Almost immediately after that, I began writing about my newly unemployed status online as a way to get new work.

Then I heard from someone who worked for the aforementioned company. We got on the phone, he told me what he wanted, I told him I could do it, and we were off and running. The whole conversation lasted maybe five or ten minutes. He knew what I could do from what I had done online. I gathered that what they were after was a voice, and what he had surmised was that I had that voice.

The billion-dollar company had hired this company to manage their social media presence, to create the social media voice of their brands online. Of course, other things are involved for the hired company. There are pie charts to be made. PowerPoint presentations to be assembled. ROIs to calculate. But that’s not my job. I am an independent contractor, and the voice of the product on Facebook and Twitter.

To say being a Facebook whisperer is lucrative would be an understatement.

Be funny or die

What was I doing? Certainly, I didn’t have any experience doing this, not exactly. I’m a journalist, a blogger, a fiction writer, but copywriter? Social media copywriter? Product channeler? Not only did I not know what I was doing, I wasn’t even really sure what to call it.

Regardless, it became apparent quickly that I was good at it. The billion-dollar company’s response to my first work: They loved it. They adored it. They thought it was fantastic. Over time, I got more products, more brands, more work.

So, what was I good at? I had an undergraduate degree from U.C. Berkeley, a graduate degree in writing, and years of journalism experience, but, it turned out, my real gift, in this case, was pretending to be an inanimate object that, regardless of the fact that it had no hands or mouth, was able to talk to the world through its Facebook page.

In a way, it was embarrassing, pretending to be a talking product. I was the digital version of the guy in the Statue of Liberty costume standing on the corner waving the sign for the tax preparation company around the corner. Was this where graduating from Berkeley got you?

But, the thing was, I was good at it, and I liked it. At first, I couldn’t really figure out why I was good at it. Why the company liked what I did, why my “work” worked, why they needed to hire me. Then I realized it’s because I’m funny. Because since I was a child, I have been making up stories in my head that I am someone else, somewhere else. It was child’s play.

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“Because they just don’t get it. And they’re too stupid to hire someone who does.”

I’m of the opinion that if they don’t get it – they’re ignorant. If they see the failing results and continue down the same path, then they’re stupid. Whether it be social media or progressive discipline, or handling the hot topics of the day such as leadership vs. management or progressive discipline. I know it’s hard to believe that some employers can be so ignorant before being assumed to be stupid. They’ll usually just go out of business, unless they’re a government entity, then they’ll stumble along forever.

Great article. I was in college preparing to be a HS English teacher when I took a copywriting course because it had the word ‘writing’ in it, and my college didn’t offer a writing major. In that first class, I had an epiphany. I couldn’t believe people got paid to do this kind of thing. Something I’d been doing my whole life in my head.

When social media first came out, I had another epiphany – that copywriters were going to be important in this space. I started a group on Linkedin called Copywriter’s Guild and wrote this: http://bit.ly/xjuLqz. You’re 100% right, the guys with the pie charts and powerpoints don’t get the ‘feel’ or ‘intuition’ that it takes to mobilize people online. Or anywhere, for that matter. I’m really happy to read that you’re flourishing in it. Well done. Keep it up.

This is why I have a theory that nobody can call themselves a social media expert- it’s too new of a platform to truly be a full-fledged aficionado in! And not every kid with a Facebook is immediately gifted in the world of social media either. The platform is ever-evolving and changing and the people who work within it must be able to adapt with the changes and actively (and enthusiastically) embrace and seek them out!